Wednesday Wisdom – December 4, 2013

We are in the first week of Advent and Christmas is racing toward us. Here is some wisdom in the rush.

This week’s Bible passage: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

72:1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.

72:2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.

72:3 May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.

72:4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.

72:5 May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.

72:6 May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

72:7 In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more.

72:18 Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.

72:19 Blessed be his glorious name forever; may his glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen.

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If we wish to quench our thirst, we must lay aside books which explain thirst and take a drink.

Jean Pierre de Caussade

Source: The Sacrament of the Present Moment

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The insight that the way to God in Jewish thought leads via the neighbor, that is to say, via the woman next door who gets on my nerves and always listens to the wrong music, is one of Judaism’s greatest gifts to humanity. I believe in that but also with the desire that my neighbor who reads nothing but the tabloids will someday also enter the way to God…

Radical humanism has its own language difficulties. It cannot pray and cannot wish for more than what seems possible. But we all need the “more” we call transcendence. We need a guarantor of the rights of the poor, the superfluous and disabled, a guarantor that is greater than our reckoning. In that sense, we are all incurable, “religious.” It is an illness we cannot get rid of in the life of industriousness.

Dorothee Soelle

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It is the duty of Christians to create the kingdom of God on Earth. This kingdom will exist only when we all have enough to eat, when our children, brothers, parents don’t have to die from hunger and malnutrition. That will be the “Glory,” a Kingdom for we who have never known it.

Rigoberta Menchu

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This was originally intended for American Thanksgiving but any time is good to give thanks.